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Author Topic: Is it okay to buy Possession?  (Read 20543 times)

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Qvist

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #25 on: November 07, 2017, 10:22:14 am »
+3

I like the decision. Possession was going into my personal ban list as well very soon, but not because it is too powerful, but just because Debt+Possession games are so terrible and maybe also because of all the rules weirdness.

JW

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #26 on: November 07, 2017, 10:25:26 am »
+8

It's not really that it's overwhelmingly powerful, it's just that it makes the game miserable garbage a lot of the time when it's out.

I used to see Possession as an interesting card that sometimes led to miserable games. But I've found that the "miserable games" part has become more frequent, and I now prefer to avoid the card completely. Some reasons for this seem to include:

Players have gotten better so games drag out more the better players get at minimizing what their deck can do when possessed. Debt cards are a further way to hamper your own deck's economy, and increase the odds of stalemates.
Trashers have gotten better, making it easier to get to stalemates and near-stalemates (see: Donate).
More boards feature the ability to reliably play multiple Possessions a turn due to card pool changes (mainly more trashers and sources of +Actions).
There are more ways to mess up an opponent's deck like the Adventures tokens.
There are more alternate VP so it is less likely that Possession can be ignored because it's too slow to have  much impact.
Errata removed some counters like decks using a lot of Monuments for economy.

Also, the ban is live! http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=604.msg10646#msg10646

Quote
Version 1.3.3
Banned Possession.

Possession has been losing popularity recently, up to the point that most people are trying to avoid this card or make a deal in chat to not use it. Because the configurable banned-cards-list isn't implemented yet, this is a temporary solution that just always puts Possession on the banned list.

This means it won't show up at random in your kingdoms anymore. You can still add it to the required cards if you want to play with it. It's also still possible you find a Possession in your Black Market (but only if the kingdom already has potions).
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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #27 on: November 07, 2017, 11:52:15 am »
+1

An April Fool that could actually be fun to play would be replacing all starting Estates with Scouts.
That way you get the satisfaction of trashing them, at least.

What if one of the remaining heirlooms is a Scout variant?

Funny you should say that, I have just tested one for my fan expansion. Cute but rarely significant and tends to hurt you a lot if you draw it on T2. I think I prefer Chancellor-copper.
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Seprix

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #28 on: November 07, 2017, 06:21:59 pm »
+3

it makes the game miserable garbage a lot of the time when it's out.

I know another card that would be a perfect fit for this list.

Is it Feodum? That thing has three entire Silvers in it.
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popsofctown

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #29 on: November 08, 2017, 01:21:30 am »
+2

This makes me super sad.

The control somebody's turn effect is so cool.  Everyone wants it to be ok, man.

MtG first did it with Mindslaver, which they had to ban (oddly, though, it didn't really have much to do with what you could do with your opponent's turn, the problem was that people were having their opponent's turn be do nothing, and had a way to play Mindslaver every turn, since it's not an -extra- turn like Possession.)

They did it again with Sorin Markov, as his ultimate, so the card didn't always do the thing.  Sorin Markov has never touched a tournament table due to low power level.  But it was like, hey, we did it though, it wasn't too powerful, obviously.

Most recently, just a little over a year ago, Emrakul, the Promised End came out, which gave the opponent an extra turn instead of controlling the turn they were supposed to have.  Unfortunately it was super important to the story, and was supposed to bring doomsday, and it was really important that every single number on the card be 13.  But really if you playtested the thing and gave it unbiased development, it would have either come out to 15/15/15 or 13 on the bad number, the cost, lower numbers on the other good numbers, the ones that say how fat she is.

I bought 60$ worth of Emrakul, they went up to like 80, but then later, they had to ban her.

Now Donald is banning Possession.

When will I ever get to control somebody's turn.

You can control my turn too, it's ok.  I just want us to have some philosophical questions about identity and some fun.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2017, 01:23:19 am by popsofctown »
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Accatitippi

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #30 on: November 08, 2017, 06:25:53 am »
0

This makes me super sad.

The control somebody's turn effect is so cool.  Everyone wants it to be ok, man.

MtG first did it with Mindslaver, which they had to ban (oddly, though, it didn't really have much to do with what you could do with your opponent's turn, the problem was that people were having their opponent's turn be do nothing, and had a way to play Mindslaver every turn, since it's not an -extra- turn like Possession.)

They did it again with Sorin Markov, as his ultimate, so the card didn't always do the thing.  Sorin Markov has never touched a tournament table due to low power level.  But it was like, hey, we did it though, it wasn't too powerful, obviously.

Most recently, just a little over a year ago, Emrakul, the Promised End came out, which gave the opponent an extra turn instead of controlling the turn they were supposed to have.  Unfortunately it was super important to the story, and was supposed to bring doomsday, and it was really important that every single number on the card be 13.  But really if you playtested the thing and gave it unbiased development, it would have either come out to 15/15/15 or 13 on the bad number, the cost, lower numbers on the other good numbers, the ones that say how fat she is.

I bought 60$ worth of Emrakul, they went up to like 80, but then later, they had to ban her.

Now Donald is banning Possession.

When will I ever get to control somebody's turn.

You can control my turn too, it's ok.  I just want us to have some philosophical questions about identity and some fun.

House rule it to once per turn and be happy. You can even do that online of you trust your opponent. :)
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crj

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #31 on: November 08, 2017, 11:14:32 am »
0

Surely the real question here is: what's going to replace Possession as a $6+P card in second-edition Alchemy? At that price, something pretty spiffy!
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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #32 on: November 08, 2017, 11:46:02 am »
+8

Now Donald is banning Possession.

When will I ever get to control somebody's turn.

You can control my turn too, it's ok.  I just want us to have some philosophical questions about identity and some fun.

Donald is not banning Possession in the way you describe here. Dominion and Magic are fundamentally different games, and the concept of banned cards in magic does not translate to Dominion. You can still play with Possession, it just won't be forced upon you anymore.

I suggest you ask your opponent once in a while what they think about Possession. If it turns out they like it, you propose another game after this one with Possession as only required card.
If you pull that off in about 3% of your games, you're back at your old Possession frequency. Except now all those games will be with players that don't yell at you for buying the card and probably like to think about its strategic implications.

In the meanwhile, the vast majority of players seems to be happy with the ban.
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markusin

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #33 on: November 08, 2017, 11:55:09 am »
+2

Now Donald is banning Possession.

When will I ever get to control somebody's turn.

You can control my turn too, it's ok.  I just want us to have some philosophical questions about identity and some fun.

Donald is not banning Possession in the way you describe here. Dominion and Magic are fundamentally different games, and the concept of banned cards in magic does not translate to Dominion. You can still play with Possession, it just won't be forced upon you anymore.

I suggest you ask your opponent once in a while what they think about Possession. If it turns out they like it, you propose another game after this one with Possession as only required card.
If you pull that off in about 3% of your games, you're back at your old Possession frequency. Except now all those games will be with players that don't yell at you for buying the card and probably like to think about its strategic implications.

In the meanwhile, the vast majority of players seems to be happy with the ban.

Won't Possession not be auto-banned from random anymore once the 5-card ban list is implemented anyway?
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Dingan

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #34 on: November 08, 2017, 01:02:57 pm »
+1

Ironic that the card that requires the most rules considerations is the same card people most often want to just get rid of
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SettingFraming

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #35 on: November 08, 2017, 01:16:35 pm »
+11

Possession being banned from randoms is great, for two fundamental reasons:

1) The common play when Possession is good is to build a deck that can only play Possessions, and then you slowly squeeze down piles while playing multiple Possessions per turn in deck that has either none or nearly no economy. These games are not interesting, after you've played one of them, and perhaps more crucially they take about an hour and a half.

2) There are many Possession interactions which cease to be in the spirit the card was intended to be used in, and these are decidedly unfun. A lot of these are Adventures/Empires related, as reserve mats (especially with Overlord/BoM!), token placements, debt, etc., are just broken interactions. Also, cards like Masquerade and Ambassador are interactions that cause Possession to be devastatingly annoying to play with.

There is a third aspect that people don't like about Possession, which is the unfun nature of having someone play with your deck. I don't think this is ban-worthy (at least in the global sense), but I certainly get how annoying it is. The worse part of this, and I think this is something that strikes more at the heart of something I really truly dislike about Possession always, is that suddenly it makes turn ordering matter a lot more. By this I mean when you're playing Dominion decks and you dud it usually means your next turn will be good since you just got your dud cards out of the way. But no such thing exists if you get possessed on your good hand, and this can be incredibly frustrating to have happen to you.

And this isn't even mentioning all the stuff I'm forgetting, such as the pins and semi-pins such as bad shuffle triggering.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2017, 01:20:12 pm by SettingFraming »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #36 on: November 08, 2017, 02:24:17 pm »
+2

I don't like the idea of 1 card being given special "sorta-banned" rules, yet also only for online play. If the card is unfun and the majority of people just don't like it, just errata it out of existence like what happened with Scout, Great Hall, etc. People can still play with those cards at home if they want, nothing's stopping them.

If it's still an official Dominion card that exists for all official purposes, then having it be the one and only card that can't show up in full random online games makes online games more different from IRL play than it has to be, and gives it a special status that no other card in the game has.
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Jacob marley

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #37 on: November 08, 2017, 04:14:57 pm »
+1

Scout and company were not "errata'ed" out of existence.  They were discontinued in the new editions of Base and Intrigue, and dropped from the online game so that online matches 2nd edition.  If Donald were to do Alchemy 2nd edition, he could do the same to Possession, but as he has ruled that out, don't expect an official errata making Possession go away.

I'm happy with this solution.
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Donald X.

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #38 on: November 08, 2017, 04:21:15 pm »
+8

I don't like the idea of 1 card being given special "sorta-banned" rules, yet also only for online play. If the card is unfun and the majority of people just don't like it, just errata it out of existence like what happened with Scout, Great Hall, etc. People can still play with those cards at home if they want, nothing's stopping them.

If it's still an official Dominion card that exists for all official purposes, then having it be the one and only card that can't show up in full random online games makes online games more different from IRL play than it has to be, and gives it a special status that no other card in the game has.
IRL you can simply not put out cards you don't like. The online version is moving in the direction of matching that, being more like the physical version, not less. The idea is to only allow 5 cards banned, rather than as many as you want, because if you can ban lots of cards you can game the system (you can game the system with just 5 bans but it won't amount to much).

We don't have this feature yet (due to it needing an interface) and Possession is the card most likely to make many banned lists. People are agreeing not to play with it and having 9-card kingdoms and that makes the game less fun. So.

Again you can still play with Possession online by manually adding it to your game. It's not gone, it just doesn't get picked out for you.
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popsofctown

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #39 on: November 08, 2017, 06:56:21 pm »
0

Now Donald is banning Possession.

When will I ever get to control somebody's turn.

You can control my turn too, it's ok.  I just want us to have some philosophical questions about identity and some fun.

Donald is not banning Possession in the way you describe here. Dominion and Magic are fundamentally different games, and the concept of banned cards in magic does not translate to Dominion. You can still play with Possession, it just won't be forced upon you anymore.

I suggest you ask your opponent once in a while what they think about Possession. If it turns out they like it, you propose another game after this one with Possession as only required card.
If you pull that off in about 3% of your games, you're back at your old Possession frequency. Except now all those games will be with players that don't yell at you for buying the card and probably like to think about its strategic implications.

In the meanwhile, the vast majority of players seems to be happy with the ban.
Can I start a ranked play game with the old chance of having Possession in it, and ask people to join that game and play with me?  Regardless of whether I can get the %age to match what it used to be precisely, to me there's something I really love about starting a game without specifying that any specific card appear in it. 
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Hyphen-ated

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #40 on: November 09, 2017, 06:06:07 am »
+1

I am happy about this Possession news!


MtG first did it with Mindslaver, which they had to ban

I was surprised to read this. When was Mindslaver banned? I went and found a banlist history at https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Banned_and_restricted_cards/Timeline and it's not mentioned there
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popsofctown

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #43 on: November 09, 2017, 08:40:42 am »
0

That article is satire. 

It was super briefly banned in block constructed, is what I heard, unlikely to have a large digital footprint since it's a small format. 
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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #44 on: November 09, 2017, 08:56:47 am »
+1

Hmm... I wonder if there is an errata, limiting the possession to work only once per turn, will it be enough to make the card playable again?

I mean, that should eliminate the stalemate situation, since it will be a lot harder to get more out of your opponent's deck then your own. With the buff coming from messing up other's deck via debt tokens and vp tokens, I don't think the card is underpowered with this constraint.
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Seprix

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #45 on: November 09, 2017, 09:17:14 am »
0

Surely the real question here is: what's going to replace Possession as a $6+P card in second-edition Alchemy? At that price, something pretty spiffy!

Nothing, it's only a temp ban.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #46 on: November 09, 2017, 11:22:30 am »
0

Hmm... I wonder if there is an errata, limiting the possession to work only once per turn, will it be enough to make the card playable again?

I mean, that should eliminate the stalemate situation, since it will be a lot harder to get more out of your opponent's deck then your own. With the buff coming from messing up other's deck via debt tokens and vp tokens, I don't think the card is underpowered with this constraint.

Very unlikely, for at least 4 reasons:

1) Donald is against errata as a general rule, and has only used it on rare occasion.

2) It is very unlikely that Alchemy will ever get a second edition update. If it gets a second printing, it would just be the same minor updates as the other sets other than Base and Intrigue.

3) The errata that have been done for a few cards like Masquerade were things that don't matter 99% of the time the card gets played.

4) Ok so Possession has already gotten errata to include the tokens thing. But this wasn't intended as a nerf to the power level; it was because otherwise a different new mechanic (debt) simply couldn't work.
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MatthewCA

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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #47 on: November 09, 2017, 12:18:12 pm »
0

Speaking speculativly, I don't see Alchemy making it to 2nd edition at all. Donald has said on several occasions that he has better things to do than work on the least popular Dominion expansion. Unless he hands off control of the game to another designer (an even less likely scenario) I just don't see it happening. Honestly, I'm saddened more by the removal of Coppersmith than Possession. There's just too much rules weirdness with Possession.
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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #48 on: November 09, 2017, 01:16:49 pm »
+3

Speaking speculativly, I don't see Alchemy making it to 2nd edition at all. Donald has said on several occasions that he has better things to do than work on the least popular Dominion expansion. Unless he hands off control of the game to another designer (an even less likely scenario) I just don't see it happening. Honestly, I'm saddened more by the removal of Coppersmith than Possession. There's just too much rules weirdness with Possession.

All the old cards have updated wordings already, including Alchemy. That work is already done. Updated printings will be done if and when the current printing sells out.
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Re: Is it okay to buy Possession?
« Reply #49 on: November 09, 2017, 07:54:24 pm »
0

Coppersmith is a great card.  How is that some kind of low bar to demonstrate how awful Possession must be?

Debt should have been implemented by adding a stack of debt cards that you put on your tavern mat and ungain by paying 1$.  Isn't that so beautiful? Also, a stack of 9999 coin token cards that are always gained to the tavern mat, may be called for +1 coin, then trashed, and are treasures with "When you play this +9$ +9 VP +9 Buys" (and in this world the player who got them into their discard pile through Possession's special text is going to keep those VP tokens any time it's played".

This post is so serious.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2017, 07:56:57 pm by popsofctown »
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